Pricing Trends North America

US & Canadian Median Room Rates See Little Movement for the Week of June 28th 2013

In price trends report, Lowest rate trends over the three months are generally flat or slow slight downward movement in all categories as might be anticipated across the summer vacation period. The exception is Toronto where the lowest 5-star rates are trending upwards in September

RateGain, The Leading hospitality technology company, released this week’s Hotel Pricing Trends and Hotel Rate Parity report. A single window BI dashboard, enabling revenue professionals on cheapest rate visibility, tracking hotel rate parity along with median rate for three (3) months of three, four and five star hotel category across some of the major cities in US & Canada region.

Data range spans across July to Sep 2013, starting from the first week of July (all rates in US dollars and for two adults on one-night stay).

Performance Facts:

In price trends report,Lowest rate trends over the three months are generally flat or slow slight downward movement in all categories as might be anticipated across the summer vacation period. The exception is Toronto where the lowest 5-star rates are trending upwards in September. Median rates across all categories are also seeing relatively little movement during the reporting period although in New York the median rates in the 3-star, 4-star and 5-star categories spike noticeably higher in September. As reflected in previous reports, a wide range of rates (shown by the difference between minimum and median numbers) is seen in Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto and Vancouver. Predictably, New York leads the way in terms of rate range with 5-star hotels offering a minimum of $372 and a median of $772 in September.

In Parity trend report,The level of rate parity between hotel websites and OTAs is typically low in many of the locations covered by the report, which is for the period from July to September 2013. Houston, New York and Las Vegas hotels are maintaining the highest levels of parity for the 3-star category; Chicago and Vancouver also show parity at more than 20% of 4-star and 5-star hotels. However, in every sample (apart from 5-star in Houston) the largest proportion of the cheapest rates was to be found on the OTA sites: 90% or more of Boston, Las Vegas and Philadelphia’s 4-star and 5-star hotels are cheaper on OTA sites. Vancouver hotels have evidence of being cheaper in brand websites but this is not a generally reflected trend. The report shows that OTAs are continuing the trends of reinforcing consumer behaviour in the direction of finding the cheapest rate; in four locations 100% of 5-star hotel rates were found to be lower on the OTA sites.

NB: RateGain specializes in competitive price intelligence and rate shopping solutions for hotels. It currently tracks more than one billion hotel rates every month across countries in US, Europe, Middle East, Asia and Latin America.

NB2: The above data is indicative in nature and RateGain can’t be held liable for its accuracy or usefulness for any purpose.

About RateGain: RateGain is a leader in hospitality technology solutions for seamless electronic distribution (channel management), revenue management decision support and brand engagement (reputation to revenue conversion) helping customers around the world to streamline their operations and sales. Since its inception in 2004, RateGain’s expertise in innovating solutions for the dynamic hospitality ecosystem has resulted in continuous growth and an established position as a thought-leader and trendsetter in the marketplace. For more information visit us at www.rategain.com

Logos, product and company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.